Mission Kakatiya has T-NRIs in tow

HYDERABAD: Telangana Minister for Irrigation T Harish Rao on Tuesday tried to impress upon Telangana NRIs about his Government’s unflinching commitment and efforts to irrigate every acre of the agricultural land in the State in the next three to four years and appealed to them to be part of Mission Kakatiya.

Mr. Harish Rao was speaking to the 715 NRIs from countries like the USA, the UK, Australia, Singapore and Gulf regions in a phone-in program, a TDF-USA initiative aimed at bringing them closer to the Government and the leadership and help collaborate in the development back home.

The Minister said that Mission Kakatiya, with the tag line, mana vooru, mana cheruvu (our village and our lake), was one of the illustrious projects for the Government. “Lakes in Telangana region enjoyed a great legacy of 1000 years. They thrived under the Kakatiyas, Quli Qutubshahis and the Nizams. However, they suffered due to callous attitude of successive governments in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.

Mission Kakatiya was being taken up on a war-footing to revive around 45000 lakes at the rate of 9000 every year until 2019 and with a huge budget of Rs 20,000 crores. These lakes require renovation and repair and should be freed from encroachments in some cases. Once they were restored, they can store around 260 TMC of water and irrigate up to 25 lakh hectares in the State.